Monday, October 13, 2008

It's not been a good few days, I've been stuffed up with the cold though getting over it now, just suffering from earache which is hellish at night and, for the first time, I've genuinely lost my purse. Know anyone else daft enough to carry around in their purse a bankcard, credit card, husband's bankcard, council tax card and national insurance card? Though perhaps I needn't be so worried about the bankcards (I'm with HBOS).

Which brings me to the financial crisis, where does poetry fit into all this? I've a feeling my writing ought to reflect the zeitgeist of the age but I'm just not inspired to write about the world's impending financial collapse. Is this not what gives poetry a bad name - its apparent pointlessness. Certainly a lot of writers do respond to climatic events. I've been thinking about how I can respond, maybe it just has to be in a less direct way.

14 comments:

A poem about a family that is evicted because they can't pay their mortgage?

The image that keeps coming back to me is that of the people who simply abandon the houses they can no longer afford. They leave the keys in the mailbox and take all their belongings and just disappear. How must that feel?

Personally, I don't think writers should worry about reflecting the spirit of the age - your writing either will do so or it won't. I don't think it has to at all. A poet's work is what it is and nothing else. If it's really good, then that should be enough.

One reason I haven't written anything recently about the financial news is that it's far from finished! Let's wait and see what happens first...

I've had so many friends over the years who have been radical political types. Now that capitalism really is wobbling like crazy...everyone's very quiet (apart from a few protesters). What is going to happen? Will anything change? Can we cope with change? It's fascinating!x

I've never been very topical in my poetry. Hell, I used to go for weeks without seeing the news on TV and I never buy a paper. My logic was always, "Well, if the world has ended I'll kinda know about it and if it's about to end I kinda don't want to know about it." Of course now you've piqued my interest you never know what'll turn up out of the blue – probably that Star Trek poem Rachel thinks is in me. At the moment my wife's out of the house and I'm listening to AC/DC and who gives a toss about the pound.

nop, gone for good. I knew when I couldn't find it in the usual places that it was really lost so I cancelled all cards immediately. a bit of a hassle sorting it all out but I'm most miffed about the plastic bankcard size pic of my son when he was a few days old which I kept in my purse :(

Ezra Pound said "Literature is news that stays news," and I don't think the fianancial crisis will stay news longer than it takes the next crisis to seize attention. Myself, I'm still waiting to see how that tricky situation at the walls of Troy plays itself out.

Of course, that's probably just my excuse for continuing to be irresponsible. If you have something to say about finance, say it.

On the other hand, Pound's poems about economics were spectacularly disastrous. Maybe that's a warning.

I know this feeling, Sorlil, it is the same with photography - nowadays writers and artists have to be socially involved, or at least this is what I see around me, all over the world. if one isn't, then there is little or no chance to get enough media attention, prizes, etc. take Le Clezio, this is the most recent example, he would have never got the Nobel if his works hadn't reflected today's world, ecology problems etc etc.but for me it is actually important that my pictures don't have anything to do with the zeitgeist :-)

email

sorlil@hotmail.co.uk

"Scottish nationalist and feminist perspectives are refracted through a singular imagination drawn to the elemental... McCready is interested in the mysteries of birth and death, the mutability of matter, nature, myth, female experience and history as narrative of women's lives"